Sunday, January 4, 2015

Manly-sounding lawyers lose more SCOTUS cases

New Scientist reports the findings of a team led by linguist Alan Yu of the University of Chicago and legal theorist Daniel Chen
of ETH Zurich in Switzerland, who played 60 recordings of male lawyers in
the Supreme Court making the traditional opening statement: "Mister
Chief Justice, may it please the court" for 200 volunteers, who then rated the
clips for how masculine-sounding they thought each speaker was, as well as other perceived traits like confidence, education and trustworthiness.

After accounting for the age and experience of the lawyers,
statistical analysis showed that only one of the traits could predict
the court outcome. Lawyers rated as speaking with less-masculine voices
were more likely to win. ...Lawyers who think they're going to lose may project a different kind of
voice, perhaps overcompensating by sounding more masculine" says Yu, who
is keen to stress that the findings are just the beginning of wider
project looking at the impact of voice and gender in the courts.

You can read an abstract of the study, The Peril of Sounding Manly,here.

Barely related: manly, truck-smashing Texas DUI Attorney Adam Reposa has had run-ins with the Texas Bar over his advertising. In the video below, he advertises his services in part by noting, "I'm what you want. I'm what you need... Not everyone has ten... long... hard... years of experience..." At about the 4:30 mark, Reposa (dressed more professionally in a white Tee shirt) argues hilariously with one Mike Dobbs, of the Advertising Review Committee of the State Bar of Texas.

Maynard (Bob "Gilligan's Island" Denver) slyly flashes a nipple to the CBS eye while trying to talk his best buddy Dobie Gillis (Dwayne Hick­man) into taking off all his clothes. Whoever said 1950s television was a vast waste­land obviously didn't know where to look.